I never liked patriotism. I always found it to be equivalent of chest-thumping apes, and the guiding force behind much of the stupid, pointless actions that have taken place in the last decade or so. So now I am in a conflict. My country (Canada) is going to shit. Our Prime Minister wants to change the narrative of Canada into a military power, and is working hard to suppress the rights of speech of any dissenters that have the sense to say he is a deplorable waste of human flesh and should be banished from this country to sell fiddlesticks in some third world nation where he will be recognized as the white devil he is. On the other hand, I have to do something that I have been reluctant to do, and that is to become, under some sense of the word, a patriot.

I have always liked being Canadian. We were like Americans, but we weren’t as much a military power, we were peacekeepers. Admittedly, our peacekeeping efforts have not been that successful all the time, but the idea of peace is something that should have more precedence then war. Being Canadian was better than being American, because people liked Canadians more than Americans. We were nicer, we didn’t shout loud in foreign resturants, we didn’t shoot everything in sight. WE DID NOT GO TO WAR. I was proud that we had a nation of peacekeepers, I didn’t brag about it because I always considered patriotism the equivalent of a degenerative disease, but having a nation of peacekeepers is something to be proud of.

Now, we have a military nation. Stephen Harper wants us to go out and fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, work our way to economic supremacy, silence anone who wants to nd generally act like an American politician, which is what bothers me. It may seem xenophobic, but the fact that Stephen Harper seems so American is what really kicks me about him. I know this sounds horrible, but a good chunk of the Canadian identity is that we’re not Americans. Making fun of Americans is as Canadian as maple syrup. Harper, however, seems to want to recreate the Canadian identity into what I have always thought separated us the most, a military power. That Harper wants to turn us into a military power is a national betrayal.

Sure, there is the whole Vimy ridge story, but I don’t really like that one either. Yes, it helped cement Canadians as a separate identity from Britain, and yes it was a military endeavour. But it was still a battle in World War One, which is one of the greatest fuck ups in history. Yes, Canadians did what the rest of England and France couldn’t, but it was still another exercise in a fundamentally pointless war that was only started because running a country or a war is not an activity for adults. In fact, if we started treating the people in charge of the military like children maybe they’d clue in to how stupid they’re acting. Keep them away from heavy machinery, keep them in diapers, talk down to them in a condescending manner. Anyways, my point is a successful battle in World War One is still a battle in World War One, that we should take pride in an event that is a travesty of humanity just goes to show how disturbing a concept patriotism can be.

But the fact is that Stephen Harper, despite his goals and my own disgust at the entire concept, has made me a patriot. The only satisfaction I can get out of this is that I am the opposite of Stephen Harper’s idea of a patriot. I’m not a military man, don’t want to be a military man and would probably get rejected by the military as physically and psychologically unsound. I am an artist, which he has cut funding too. I’m not gay, but I put that up to social conditioning and not finding Mr. Right. I’m also into the occult, and while the only connections to Harper and the occult I could find are websites that are accusing him of Satanic Freemasonry, I don’t think Harper is a fan of that sort of thing either. But the fact remains that I am beginning to get a vested interest in how Canada exists as a nation, and I am not pleased. So now I need to figure out a way to do this, get Canada back to normal, and do this all before the patriotism gets to my central nervous system and I die.